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The Ministry of Industry announced that it would ban the export of crusted leather as of December 2011 due to price hikes and the scarcity of supplies.

The ban aims to control the price hike of hides and skins in the market, and as a result force out the middle men who speculate on prices according to Berhanu Serjabo, director of corporate communication of the Leather Industry Development Institute under the ministry.

Zemen Bank’s net profit doubled from 29 million birr to 63.5 million birr in the last fiscal year.

Zemen Bank disbursed 633.7 million birr in loans to its customers. Loans to medium and long-term projects amounted to 53 percent of the total loans disbursed.

Although the bank increased loans disbursed to its customers by 67.6 percent, its loan-to-deposits ratio remained at 55 percent, the same as that of the year before. 

The amount of the loan is estimated to be around 1.45 billion dollars.

The airlines placed orders for 10 Dreamliners in 2005 valued at 1.5 billion dollars. Originally, deliveries were scheduled for 2008-2010, which Boeing failed to meet. Now Ethiopian expects to receive the first two of ten Dreamliners next March which it ordered in 2005.

Allana Potash said yesterday that it had intersected potash mineralization in Holes 24, 25 and 26 at shallow depths in the south-western portion of its land position in Ethiopia.

In addition to previous holes completed by Allana, holes 24, 25 and 26 form a region of potash mineralization which occurs at depth between 75 and 200 metres below surface, Farhad Abasov, President and CEO of Allana said.  

“Allana management believes that the potash in this region may be amenable to mining by open pit methods and future studies will focus on this potential,” Abasov said.

Energoinvest, the largest Bosnian engineering group, and the Ethiopian government signed 45 million dollar contract this week for the building of 150 kilometres of electric power transmission lines.

The works are scheduled to be completed in two years according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The contract was signed by Meheret Debebe, general manager of the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation and Dzemal Vlahovljak, general manager of Energoinvest.

Energoinvest won the contract on July 21.

Ethiopia's year-on-year inflation jumped to 40.6 percent in August from 39.2 percent in July as food prices, especially those of cereals went up, the Central Statistical Agency said on Tuesday. 

Early in August, the agency had said that Ethiopia’s inflation rate climbed to 39.2 percent in July from a year earlier.

Inflation accelerated from 38.1 percent in June, according to the agency. Food prices increased by 47.4 percent in July after rising 45.3 percent in the previous month, while the cost of non-food items fell from 27.9 percent to 27.8 percent, it said.

The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) accepted offers last week from three European companies which responded to the bank’s desire to print 50 birr and 100 birr notes.

The bank wants to order the printing of notes with a total value of 52 billion birr to replace all-in notes under circulation. It will be the largest order ever, more than 90 percent of what it had printed last year.

Sugar Corp., a state-owned sugar producer, said that it was building ten new factories and was inviting private investment as part of a plan to become one of the world's 10 biggest exporters of the crop.

The project involves constructing plants and establishing farms at a cost of about 4.6 billion dollars in four regions of the country, Abay Tsehaye, director general of the company, said last week.

Abay said that Ethiopia hopes to become one of the top 10 exporters of sugar in the coming 15 years.

Ethiopia announced that it would build two more dams along its share of the Nile, six months after launching the construction of a 5,250 megawatt power plant on the river.

Ethiopia aims to produce 20,000 megawatts of power within the next ten years, part of a plan to spend 12 billion dollars over 25 years to raise power generating capability.

According to Reuters, officials estimate that the country has the potential to produce about 45,000 megawatt of electricity.

Income from the export of Ethiopia’s staple food, the injera bread, rose to 350,000 dollars to 400,000 dollars a month.

Five years ago the monthly revenue from injera was 10,000 dollars, according to the Ministry of Industry. The ministry expects that the revenue from the export of injera around the world will rise to five million dollars during the current fiscal year.

The United States is the major importer of injera followed by Europe and the Middle East.